African Cherokees in Indian Territory: From Chattel to Citizens / Edition 1

by Celia E. Naylor

Overview

Forcibly removed from their homes in the late 1830s, Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, and Chickasaw Indians brought their African-descended slaves with them along the Trail of Tears and resettled in Indian Territory, present-day Oklahoma. Celia E. Naylor vividly charts the experiences of enslaved and free African Cherokees from the Trail of Tears to Oklahoma's entry into the Union in 1907. Carefully extracting the voices of former slaves from interviews and mining a range of sources in Oklahoma, she creates an engaging narrative of the composite lives of African Cherokees. Naylor explores how slaves connected with Indian communities not only through Indian customs—language, clothing, and food—but also through bonds of kinship.

Examining this intricate and emotionally charged history, Naylor demonstrates that the "red over black" relationship was no more benign than "white over black." She presents new angles to traditional understandings of slave resistance and counters previous romanticized ideas of slavery in the Cherokee Nation. She also challenges contemporary racial and cultural conceptions of African-descended people in the United States. Naylor reveals how black Cherokee identities evolved reflecting complex notions about race, culture, "blood," kinship, and nationality. Indeed, Cherokee freedpeople's struggle for recognition and equal rights that began in the nineteenth century continues even today in Oklahoma.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807858837
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	07/01/2008
Series:	The John Hope Franklin Series in African American History and Culture
Edition description:	1
Pages:	376
Sales rank:	1,128,996
Product dimensions:	5.60(w) x 8.60(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Celia E. Naylor is assistant professor of history at Dartmouth College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments     ix
Introduction     1
On the Run in Antebellum Indian Territory     25
Day-to-Day Resistance to the Peculiar Institution and the Struggle to Remain Free in the Antebellum Cherokee Nation     51
Conceptualizing and Constructing African Indian Racial and Cultural Identities in Antebellum Indian Territory     75
Trapped in the Turmoil: A Divided Cherokee Nation and the Plight of Enslaved African Cherokees during the Civil War Era     125
Cherokee Freedpeople's Struggle for Recognition and Rights during Reconstruction     155
Contested Common Ground: Landownership, Race Politics, and Segregation on the Eve of Statehood     179
Afterword     201
Treaty with the Cherokee Nation, 1866     221
Notes     239
Bibliography     313
Index     343

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

In this bold and soulful book, Celia Naylor accomplishes something novel—a historical survey of slavery and emancipation in the Cherokee Nation from the perspective of enslaved blacks and freedpeople themselves. Her penetrating analysis of this unknown 'world of bondage' reveals both the close cultural ties and harsh material realities that characterized the 'peculiar institution' in Indian Territory.—Tiya Miles, author of Ties That Bind: The Story of an Afro-Cherokee Family in Slavery and Freedom

Celia Naylor has produced a bold, well-written book on a highly provocative and critically important topic, the story of African American people who were enslaved not by Europeans but by Native Americans. The work is bold and original because it does not shy away from two central contradictions: that slaves and their descendants can partially identify with their former masters, and that people who have experienced racial prejudice themselves can adopt racial prejudice against others. Anyone interested in the comparative history of slavery, western history, identity politics, and the intersections of race, culture, and nationalism will count this work as essential reading.—Circe Sturm, University of Oklahoma

Editorial Reviews

A welcome contribution to one of the more important trends in the historiography of southeastern Indians: the recent expansion of scholarship on race, slavery, and the struggles of freedmen within the Five Tribes.—American Historical Review

Will take its rightful place as a significant contribution to the topic of nineteenth-century African-Indian relationships.—H-Net Reviews

A rich and textured glimpse of life, work, love and loss in Indian Territory.—West Virginia History

Provocative and impressive . . . elucidate[s] a highly significant area of study within Indian slave-holding communities. . . . Highly recommend[ed].—Georgia Historical Quarterly

Offers a thorough and descriptive history of the people who were at the center of this controversy. . . . Naylor skillfully mines the Work Progress Administration collection of ex-slave narratives to recreate the lives of people of African descent in the nineteenth-century Cherokee Nation.—The Journal of Southern History

An outstanding job of illustrating the intricate sociopolitical interactions between bondsmen and their Cherokee masters. . . . Helps illuminate the history of African Americans in the Cherokee Nation. . . . An excellent scholarly work to aid in researching African Cherokees from slavery through the turn of the twentieth century.—North Carolina Historical Review

[A] sweeping, evenhanded study. . . . Naylor has pieced together a sophisticated portrait of slavery in the Cherokee Nation.—Canadian Journal of History

[A] remarkable book. . . . Not only well-written history but timely as well. . . . A must read for anyone researching Native Americans, ethnicity, or race relations.—Great Plains Quarterly

Naylor nimbly works with sparse and sometimes problematic evidence (such as the Works Progress Administration's slave narratives) to render a sensitive and sophisticated telling of hardship and suffering, overt and everyday resistance, acceptance and disfranchisement, and adaptation and exclusion. . . . An enormous accomplishment.—The Journal of American History

A fine book taken in the spirit of reawakening an interest in an oft-neglected area of African American and Cherokee history. . . . Draws on an impressive array of sources. . . . Provides a timely record of African participation in the nation.—Chronicles of Oklahoma

From the Publisher